Main Street

Sinclair Lewis was the first American novelist to win the Nobel Prize. MAIN STREET is his first important book, a closely observed, elegantly written satire of small-town life at the onset of the Jazz Age. At once an artifact and a modern classic, its characters' slang and civic amenities are exotic--their social and personal concerns wholly familiar. Brian Emerson has a pleasant voice; excellent diction; a bright amiable pace; and the stamina to sustain him through 18 hours of narrative. He delivers the text adequately but without distinction, subtext, or nuance. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine


Occasionally author, novel and narrator mesh really well; so it is with this reading of Lewis's satirical, yet affectionate, portrait of small-town America in the 1920's. The modern parallel is Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon. Protagonist Carol Kennicott fails to transform the dull ordinariness she finds in Gopher Prairie, but her attempt is grand and grandly told by Barbara Caruso. Caruso's wry voice provides just the right characterizations for the frustrated Kennicott; her patient, but misunderstanding, husband; and the uncertain townspeople. Listeners will sense in Caruso's reading what is conveyed in Lewis's writing--raised eyebrows, knowing looks, a mix of condescension and tolerance. T.H. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine